French Antitrust Regulator Fines Apple for Privacy Tool Abuse

French antitrust regulator – The Autorité de la concurrence – on Monday imposed a fine of $162.29 million for allegedly abusing its dominant position in the sector for the distribution of mobile applications on its devices iOS and iPadOS via a privacy control tool between April 2021 and July 2023.

The Autorité had previously rejected a request for interim measures in the case, while deciding to pursue the investigation into the merits. Authorities in Germany, Italy, Romania and Poland have opened similar probes over ATT, which Apple promotes as a privacy safeguard.

As part of its investigation into the case, the Autorité found that while the objective of the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework was not at its core problematic, how ATT is implemented is neither necessary for nor proportionate with Apple’s stated objective of protecting personal data.

The introduction of the framework led to multiple consent pop-ups being displayed, making the use of third-party applications in the iOS environment excessively complex, the antitrust regulator noted.

The Autorité also found that the rules governing the interaction between the different pop-up windows displayed undermined the neutrality of the framework, causing definite economic harm to application publishers and advertising service providers.

In this respect, the Autorité noted that ATT as implemented by Apple penalised smaller publishers in particular since, unlike the main vertically integrated platforms, they depend to a large extent on

third-party data collection to finance their business.

Downplays US Reaction

Speaking to reporters, Head of the antitrust regulator Benoit Coeure brushed aside concerns that the decision would prompt retaliation from the US President Donald Trump who has threatened to slap fines on EU countries fining the US companies.

“We apply competition law in an apolitical manner. But what we have heard is that the US authorities intend to apply antitrust law to the big digital platforms as strictly as their predecessors. So in terms of antitrust, I don’t see any controversy between the US and Europe on how we apply the law,” Coeure said.

Meanwhile, the US tech giant said in a statement that while they were disappointed with the decision, the French Competition Authority has not required any specific changes to ATT.

Several advertising companies such as Alliance Digitale, the Internet Advertising Syndicate, and the Union of Media Consulting and Buying Companies, welcomed the decision and described it as an important victory for the 9,000 companies in the online media and advertising ecosystem.